With a BA in Graphic Design from l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Pascaline Lefebvre has been working as a graphic designer for the past five years, with a firmer focus on illustration in this past year. Her involvement in Hothouse 11 was partly motivated by “Getting back into shape, having a gym membership, and imagining characters based on what I saw in real life.”

On the production of Pumpers:

The film observes people interacting at a gym: I think they look and interact a bit like children in a kindergarten. Also, the film’s original soundtrack is composed of various baby noises. There’s a wide range of emotions there that can be interpreted many different ways and associated with different personality types or character actions.
I draw faster using a cartoon style. I usually draw with pen and paper, but for this project I had to use a Wacom Cintiq in order to meet the deadline.

On the benefits of Hothouse:

It’s very motivating to have people around you dealing with the same boundaries and deadlines. The staff at the NFB were amazing: they love their job and you can tell. I benefited from an immense amount of motivation.

What next?

To do illustration full-time. Also, I want to experiment with hand-drawn animation (in a technical way) during my free time.